Research

Working Paper
Craig AC. Optimal Income Taxation with Spillovers from Employer Learning [Job Market Paper]. Working Paper.Abstract
I study optimal income taxation when human capital investment is imperfectly observable by employers. In my model, Bayesian employer inference about worker productivity drives a wedge between the private and social returns to human capital investment by compressing the wage distribution. The resulting positive externality from worker investment implies lower optimal marginal tax rates, all else being equal. To quantify the significance of this externality for optimal taxation, I calibrate the model to match empirical moments from the United States, including new evidence on how the speed of employer learning about new labor market entrants varies over the worker productivity distribution. Taking into account the spillover from human capital investment introduced by employer inference reduces optimal marginal tax rates by 13 percentage points at around 100,000 dollars of income, with little change in the tails of the income distribution. The welfare gain from this adjustment is equivalent to raising every worker's consumption by one percent.
craig_jmp.pdf
Craig AC, Roland G Fryer J. Complementary Bias: A Model of Two-Sided Statistical Discrimination. Working Paper.Abstract
We introduce a model of two-sided statistical discrimination in which worker and firm beliefs are complementary. Firms try to infer whether workers have made investments required for them to be productive, and simultaneously, workers try to deduce whether firms have made investments necessary for them to thrive. When multiple equilibria exist, group differences are sustained by both sides of the interaction – workers and firms. Strategic complementarity between the two sides complicates both empirical analysis designed to detect discrimination and policy meant to alleviate it. Affirmative action is much less effective than in traditional statistical discrimination models. More generally, we demonstrate the futility of policies that are designed to correct gender and racial disparities but do not address both sides of the coordination problem. We propose a two-sided version of "investment insurance" – a highly effective and potentially cheap policy in which the government (after observing a noisy version of the employer's signal) offers to hire any worker who it believes to be qualified and whom the employers do not offer a job. The paper concludes by proposing a way to identify statistical discrimination by employers when beliefs are complements.
twosided.pdf
In Preparation
Craig AC, Martin D. The Causal Effects of Student Suspensions. In Preparation.Abstract

We identify the causal effect of out-of-school suspensions on student outcomes. Suspension policies are controversial among education policy-makers who seek to balance deterrence and the need for a peaceful classroom against keeping at-risk students in school where they can learn. There is a racial component to this debate, as black students are suspended at much higher rates than white students. Our identification comes from quasi-experimental variation in the impact of a policy change in 2012 in a large urban school district, which eliminated suspensions for minor offenses such as smoking or using obscene language. For the majority of schools, in which suspensions for minor infractions were used extremely rarely, the new suspension policy necessarily had no impact. However, it led to a sharp reduction in the total suspension rate in schools that had previously used them. Despite the strong association in our data between low test scores and high rates of suspension for minor offenses, our quasi-experimental results for students in grades 6 to 8 indicate that the policy change had no causal impact on test scores. This remains true when the sample is restricted to black students, or students who had been suspended in the past. Our calculations therefore suggest that differences in suspension rates for minor offenses are unlikely to contribute meaningfully to the racial achievement gap observed in our sample.

2017
Craig AC, Garbarino E, Heger S, Slonim R. Waiting to Give: Stated and Revealed Preferences. Management Science. 2017;63 (11) :3672-3690. Publisher's VersionAbstract

We estimate and compare the effect of increased time costs on consumer satisfaction and behavior. We are able to move beyond the existing literature, which focuses on satisfaction and intention, and estimate the effect of waiting time on return behavior. Further, we do so in a prosocial context and our measure of cost is the length of time a blood donor spends waiting. We find that relying on satisfaction data masks important time cost sensitivities; namely, it is not how the donor feels about the wait time that matters for return behavior, but rather the actual duration of the wait. Consistent with theory we develop, our results indicate that waiting has a significant longer-term social cost: we estimate that a 38% increase (equivalent to one standard deviation) in the average wait would result in a 10% decrease in donations per year.